Why the Religious Right's Girl Scouts "cookie-cott" is full of caca!

The one place you'd hope the abortion battle would not be waged is with the Girl Scouts of the USA.

The thought of Girl Scout cookies -- an ubiquitous symbol of the organization and an American staple like apple pie that made nearly $700 million in sales since 1999 -- has helped fund abortions at Planned Parenthood is unfathomable.

But with Religious Right activists fishing for another fallacious assertion to try on the American public, this one unfortunately has legs.

But the abortion issue is the Religious Right's ploy to hide their misogyny and homophobia cloaked as a moral imperative to protect the unborn fetus.

However, in the face of proving them wrong neither shows any compunction to abate their lies nor actions, but rather to continue their homophobic and misogynistic diatribes.

"The individualism of feminism has been devastating to this country. I’d say you ought to say ‘NO" to the Girl Scout cookies, too," Kevin Swanson told Right Wing Watch. "I don’t want to support lesbianism, I don’t want to support Planned Parenthood and I don’t want to support abortion, and if that be the case I’m not buying Girl Scout cookies."

Proof of their claim is the recent hire of Krista Kokjohn-Poehler in October 2013 as the Chief Girl Experience Officer with the Girl Scouts. And what further outrages the Religious Right is that Kokjohn-Poehler is not only a lesbian but also a married one, at that, having joined her surname with her spouse's.

“Now I have another good reason not to buy Girl Scout Cookies. Not only are the cookies bad, but so is the lesbo Girl Experience Officer. What the hell is the message here? – experience this girl, you might like it?” an anonymous person wrote on the right-wing website breitbart.com.

With Kokjohn-Poehler's job responsibility to “serve as the chief of girl innovation and be the expert on and organizational voice for girls," notorious vile-mouthed right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh criticized the Kokjohn-Poehler's hire as evidence of an "all out jihad" on American values.

The Girl Scouts' position statement makes it a point to stress that the organization recognizes the rights of and welcome LGBT people.

But the Religious Right not only has a problem with lesbians, they also have a problem with little girls who are selling cookies now but might one day grow up and be this nation’s future reproductive justice advocates, for being indoctrinated by the leftward leanings of the Girl Scouts. They also have a problem with female elected officials who advocate a women's right to choose.

Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, is a reproductive justice advocate. Sebelius voted to make contraceptives available to everyone and she vetoed the notorious 2008 Comprehensive Reform Abortion Act that prevented a woman from obtaining an abortion, even where it may be necessary to save her life.

So, too, was Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis, a sort-of reproductive justices advocate before she flip-flopped on the limited late-term abortion ban to woo red-state voters. But Davis's switch wasn't swift enough to avoid cookcott.com's sleight-of-hand in ensnaring her in their anti-abortion propaganda.

Although the Girl Scouts have emphatically denied that they are in bed with Planned Parenthood or their affiliates, Religious Right opponents continually contest that the organization doesn't want to own up to the fact that their local Girl Scout councils, and teen subsidiaries are.

Sadly, for the Girl Scouts this is becoming in many ways a losing battle with the Religious Right. The Religious Right has successfully generated a decline in local cookie sales in states across the country, a lost, to date, of over a half-million members, and $4.9 million. And the Religious Right's success, according to Gallop, is that the country, surprisingly, is leaning more and more to the right: “conservative Americans (40%) outnumbered both moderates (35%) and liberals (21%).”

Underneath this bogus claim by the Religious Right that GSUSA is a pro-abortion organization is merely a right-wing zealot resistance toward modernity and the inevitable changes it brings.

For example, in 1917 when the first African-American Girl Scout troop was founded, many of the ancestors of today's Religious Right protested this like they are now over the inclusion of LGBT Scouts.

The training ground for a “biblical vision for womanhood" for little girls that Swanson and Buehner advocate is the Christian-based alternative to GSUSA -- the American Heritage Girls (AHG) founded in 1995.

“American Heritage Girls is a wonderful faith-based alternative to the Girl Scouts. It promotes a life- honoring culture, stresses the importance of service and espouses values that clearly delineate right from wrong,” King stated in AHG’s February press release.

But the Right's notion of right is rooted in a religious form of misogyny and homophobia that it's even hard for their women to rise out of.

Empowering little girls with confidence and self- belief ensures us of a future generation of strong women as role models. And if purchasing boxes of Girl Scout cookies assist them along the way, that's the least any of us can do.

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The Rev. Irene Monroe is a syndicated religion columnist who appears in SDGLN, The Huffington Post and other media. She was chosen in October 2009 by MSNBC as one of "10 black women you should know." Monroe has been profiled in O, The Oprah Magazine and in the Gay Pride episode of “In the Life" TV, a segment that was nominated for an educational Emmy. Several times she has received the Harvard University certificate of distinction in teaching. She is in the film, "For the Bible Tells Me So," and is profiled in "CRISIS: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social, and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing up Gay in America." Visit her website here .